SVA BFA Fine Arts

The best power tools

Woodshop

Watch those fingers! With highly trained staff and faculty at their side, students are taught the appropriate safety measures when working in the state-of-the-art wood shop at BFA Fine Arts. Students have access to all the tools needed for carpentry and milling and have the opportunity to learn new skills through one of our many sculpture classes. While the wood shop contains the best power tools, there are also thousands of hand tools available to students.

Featured Equipment

SawStop table saw

The SawStop Contractor Saw offers versatility and safety in the shop and stability and mobility on the jobsite. It delivers the performance you need with the peace of mind only SawStops patented safety system can provide. The SawStop table saws unique brake design detects hand or finger contact with the saw blade within milliseconds, instantly stopping and retracting the blade, helping to avoid serious injury. The fit, finish and tolerance levels are second to none.

Featured Equipment

Dewalt Mitre Saw

The DEWALT 10 in. Compound Miter Saw’s precise miter system and innovative machined base fence design offer you long-term fence straightness from additional support. This miter saw is built around a powerful 15-Amp motor that delivers up to 5000 RPM to its cutting blade. Miter detent override for fine adjustment and precise miter angle.

Woodshop Equipment

Cuting

Dewalt Sliding Compound Saws

Milwaukee Panel Saw

Saw Stop Table Saw

Laguna 24″ Band Saw

Laguna 14″ Band Saw

Sanding

Grizzly 6″ Belt and 12″ Disc Sander

Jet Spindle Sander

Drilling

Delta 12” drill press

Jet 20” drill press

Shaping:

Powermatic 12″ Planer

Powermatic 8″ Jointer

Jet Wood Lathe

Woodshop Courses

Digital fabrication practices have revolutionized design and manufacturing, and are reshaping the world around us. Increasingly these tools are being employed by artist to create works previously impossible or impractical to make. This course will be an exploration of CNC (Computer Numerical Control) based fabrication and its integration into contemporary art- and object-making. It will emphasize technology such as the CNC laser cutter, CNC router and CNC plasma, and discuss various fabrication methods and refine skillsets. We will also examine how this technology affects our understanding of space and material, modes of production, and other considerations.

As an introduction to the material world, this course explores diverse media and their potentialities to create volume, line and mass. Ranging from the ethereal to the fabricated, materials such as clay, plaster, cardboard, wood, resin and wire will be investigated by exercises in casting, mold-making, installation and site-specific work. Discussion will include concepts of space, gravity and light, among others, as they pertain to three-dimensional form.

This course is designed as a series of projects to encourage students to solve problems and discover working processes. Each project will begin with a discussion of contemporary artists, as well as current museum and gallery exhibitions. Various materials will be explored, from woodworking to mold-making, welding to video. We will meet for group critiques.

This workshop takes a worldview of the sculpture-making process and will show how different cultures and art forms have impacted today’s sculpture. Students will not only draw on their own personal/cultural pasts to develop ideas and make sculpture, but also to challenge or ally those ideas with different information and influences. A wide range of materials and fabrication methods are available in this course. Through critiques and slide discussions, issues of form, content and context will be examined and interpreted. The use of language as applied to sculpture is of particular interest. A partial listing of the current vernacular that we will be cataloging and assessing for our use includes: architectonic, socially concerned, outsider art, site-specific, randomness and objectness. We’ll attend exhibitions, films, lectures or performances that relate to our activities. There will also be required reading.

Sculpture without limits. Every kind of sculpture can be investigated. Every type of material can be used. Welding, building, carving, modeling, site-specific and mixed-media assemblage will be taught. Hands-on instruction and strong technical skills enable each sculptor to realize his or her own thoughts. Weekly critiques will discuss work done in class. The idea comes first and then the sculpture. Where it came from, what it means, how it got there. Visits to museums, galleries and studios will be assigned. Slide lectures will augment discussion.

Through exploration and invention, and by embracing all media, students will engage in a critical discourse about what is happening in real time in the visual arts now, through their work. A fully mixed-media orientation is receptive to all students, including those who are primarily painters, photographers or video-makers, performers, etc., and to all approaches. The emphasis is on enabling students to experiment with a full range of traditional, unconventional and exotic materials, techniques and ideas: digital fabrication, audio, electricity, fluids, mechanical parts, photomontage, optics, metal, paper, wood. The development of student concepts and personal interests will be strongly supported. Our thinking will be placed in contemporary and historical context through presentations of visual and textual resources: slide shows, video, articles, Web-based online materials and a weekly update on current exhibitions. Among the many ideas that will be explored are: perception, transformation, performance, the body and language, as well as the environmental, political and site-specific in art. Resources will be discussed and extensive technical help will be provided. There will be group critiques. Instruction will be on an individual basis.